SEPARATION OF POWERS, SYSTEM OF CHECKS AND BALANCES IN LIGHT OF IRAKLI KLDIASHVILI S.J.D. Fellow, University of Connecticut, School of Law. AMERICAN CONSTITUTIONALISM

მოკლე ისტორიული მიმოხილვა

Abstract

“So enthralled have Americans become with their idea of a constitution as a written superior law set above the entire government against which all other law is to be measured that it is difficult to appreciate a contrary conception.”1789 American constitution rests on genuinely shared values and hopes of its citizens. It is a true embodiment of unity of civil spirit, strength and authority. Furthermore, built on a set of common values the founding fathers instituted a system that has its roots in both the people and an authoritative document, the Constitution of United States, which as a result of the American Revolution, wrote Thomas Paine in his Rights of Man, became “a political bible” for Americans.

Americans had long lived under what has been called “practical constitution”adhering fundamental principles of the natural law and the natural rights. Resemblance in interpreting those fundamental principles in both colonial America and in the “Mother Country” had ensured a peaceful cohabitation in the common political domain. And, too, as long as interpretations of those fundamental principles remained rational the colonies maintained loyalty to the Crown. But when it came to solve the controversy between the colonies and the royal authority, essence and scope of the application of those fundamental principles had to be revised diametrically. “It was during this controversy that the crucial divergence in the constitutional tradition of the English-speaking world was made.”